* You're going back in time about 10-20 years in terms of tool chains, language support, memory/CPU power, debuggers, and for the most part programming paradigm

* You're going back in time about 10-20 years in terms of tool chains, language support, memory/CPU power, debuggers, and for the most part programming paradigms. * Documentation? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA LOL * Debugging can be extremely challenging in real-time systems. Things like JTAG printf will slow things down enough to wreck your timings. * You have to at least know the basics about the hardware, especially if you're doing control systems and meddling with GPIOs and such.